


Ex solem in umbram

by nerddowell



Category: Dead Romans Society
Genre: M/M, Pining, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 04:32:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4086985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(My Latin is terrible so if the title makes no sense, I apologise - it’s supposed to translate to, ‘Out from the light into the shade/darkness’.)</p><p>Based on a headcanon of Lucrezia <a href="http://chelidon.tumblr.com">chelidon</a>'s, and inspired by the song <em>You Are My Sunshine</em>. Ovid realises he's fallen in love with Catullus, but it turns out to be too late to tell him. Might not make sense if you're not familiar with some of the mechanics of the Dead Romans Society's world, so I recommend reading the comic before reading this. It can be found on <a href="http://chelidon.tumblr.com">chelidon</a>'s art blog, <a href="http://things-chelidon-draws.tumblr.com">things-chelidon-draws</a>.  <b>Although this fic is in the same universe as my previous Dead Romans works, it exists on a separate timeline and is therefore not part of the 'series' I am also writing!</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rêverie

**Author's Note:**

> I'm an angst monster and make absolutely no apologies for that whatsoever.
> 
> Each chapter was written with a song in mind, which (in most cases) the [chapter] title comes from. Songs will be linked to at the end of chapters for supplimentary audio, if you wish to listen.

The course spec listed the Latin poets under week sixteen: Vergil, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Martial. The class was full of bored first years, three weeks before the Easter break, already tired of the whirlwind tour through the late Roman Republic and the beginnings of the Empire under Augustus. Of those who had actually brought the texts with them, few had bothered to open them, and fewer still were actually reading and taking notes as the professor droned on about the elegiac form and the meter used by the poets in question. Occasionally, one of the students actually paying attention would raise their hand to ask a question, only to be ruthlessly elbowed and shushed into submission by their neighbours who were more interested in using this 9am Monday morning lecture to catch up on sleep or play Candy Crush on their mobiles.

Shuffling in the bobbly, foam-stuffed chairs of the lecture hall and tapping pens idly against the side of their notebook, one student at the back flicked through the anthology of Latin poetry prescribed for the class. There were a few poets other than those mentioned in the powerpoint onscreen who had been included; Lucretius, on whose work there was a module available for second or third year, and Catullus, of whom none of the other students appeared to have heard and who was mentioned only briefly, in passing, when the lecture moved onto Ovid. The boy at the back doodled a penis in biro on the edge of the paper, dog-eared the book at his page, and laid his head on the desk, choosing to sleep through the final fifteen minutes of the lecture.  
  


* * *

 

Vergil was sat with his back against a tree, watching birds wheel overheard and sing to one another as the wind ruffled his hair lightly, deep in thought. The day was as bright as every other in their small, hollow afterlife - brilliant white light shrouding them all in a cold sort of luminescence, barely warming their chilled skin, and a light breeze which stirred the grass beneath their feet and toyed playfully with the hems of togas and tunics. It was a peaceful sort of afterlife, but dull. Vergil himself rather enjoyed the calming quietness of their current existence, as it allowed him all the space and time in the world to mull over his thoughts, without the clanging and crashing of outward influence to disrupt things. But he suspected equally that he was in the minority.

The others were clustered in their usual small groups around him in the open space of the forum green. Horace, with his nose in a book, was murmuring to himself, offering critical comments about the writing style and ability of whichever author whose work it was that he was buried in; Cicero, a few paces to Horace's right, was sat composing a lengthy letter to Atticus, who was away visiting their Greek friends at whichever version of this white blank existence they had been consigned to; Petronius was sat playing dice with Lucretius, and appeared to be losing, whilst Ovid lay on his back watching the clouds pass by and composing poetry under his breath.

Catullus and Seneca were nowhere to be seen. Unusual, given that Catullus and Ovid were all but joined at the hip nowadays, where they were constantly getting up to some mischief or another. But then, Catullus had written another one of his rather acerbic limericks about a certain jaundiced acquaintance of theirs last week, which may have explained his absence, and Seneca's, who was most likely hunting him down to berate him for the five uses of the word 'mentula' in that poem alone. Vergil smiled to himself. For all Catullus managed to get on people's nerves - and it was an exceptional talent of his - it was physically impossible to stay angry at him for long. He was too much like a slightly-overgrown schoolboy, vivacious and enthusiastic in his mischief and enjoyment of life.

Ovid was watching a pair of swallows pursuing one another, whipping in and out of tree branches on wings like shards of jet, wishing that there were clouds in the sky, or that rain would fall every so often. He had had more than enough of the bitter, cold weather during his exile, but this endless white and lack of any natural weatherly occurences beside a persistent breathy breeze unnerved him. It was like a reminder that this was, no matter how much they felt to the contrary, a death to all of them. Their graves were cool and white, cocooned in skies like marble. The only source of colour in this life was the grass beneath their feet, the varying tones of one another's hair, and the sea green of Catullus' eyes, sparkling like sunlight on waves.

He swallowed awkwardly, more than a little confused. Although he was comparatively experienced in his past life, he had shared very little with boys and other men. It had always been the lush curves of a woman's figure, her breasts and hips and soft, rounded stomach that drew his attention and made his lusts rise. Needless to say, Catullus' angular limbs and wide, slightly bulging eyes had never made him really take that second glance; and yet, now, when thinking about the things he misses most from the truly living world and all of its vibrancy, his mind is dragged subconsciously towards his friend, who embodies that concept. Catullus is so _alive_ , even in death; as if all of the potential energy wasted in his previous living had been trapped inside a tiny power cell in his body, and it fizzed and sparked through him in an attempt to escape again.

He was like a duplicate sun for the rest of the 'society', as they called themselves. The light in the 'sky', if it could indeed be called that, came from some undetectable source, enveloping them so that it was shared out equally throughout the globe of their current experience. But Catullus was a star; a pinpoint of energy in that flatness, like a spotlight among the low glow of candles. Ovid couldn't help but gravitate towards that light, perhaps hoping that Catullus' brilliance would throw some of the darker areas in himself into relief.  
  


* * *

 

 _Speak of the devil, and he shall appear_. Less than a handful of moments later, there were sounds of feet whispering through blades of grass and a _whump_ as Catullus' bony body landed beside him on the grass, laying back to gaze at the sky with him. Ovid's eyes suddenly found the birds he had been staring sightlessly at perched on the branch of a tree, coyly tweeting to one another and approaching, then hopping away between the leaves. He understood them well. He felt the absurd desire to do the same to Catullus beside him; nestle closer affectionately, perhaps lay his head on the other's skinny chest and let himself fall into the white noise of the silence in his chest - but also to edge away, Catullus' proximity making his skin prickle uncomfortably and heat rise up his chest as he bit his lip, flustered. Expecting a playful comment to trickle from his friend's lips - Catullus enjoyed nothing more than to tease Ovid for his easy blushes and un-Ovid-like sudden shyness in his company - he turned his head to look at Catullus, but the green eyes he had been thinking so fondly of were closed, and the corners of Catullus' mouth downturned in secret sadness.

"What's the matter?" Ovid asked, touching his shoulder gently, and Catullus took a moment before his eyes opened and he turned his head to meet Ovid's gaze, startling a little as if realising suddenly just how close they were lying. He moved away anxiously, and gave a weak smile that didn't fool Ovid in the least.

"Nothing, my friend. Were you watching the birds?"

"You seemed troubled. And don't change the subject, I can read you too well to be taken in by this sudden interest in ornithology."

"I've nothing to complain about, honestly. They're sparrows, aren't they? Like my puella's. Her pet..." He seemed to fall back into deep thought, withdrawing into his own mental space the way Ovid had only seen Vergil do before, and he exchanged a confused glance with Petronius as Catullus' eyes glazed over slightly. Gently shaking his shoulder did nothing to regain his attention, so Ovid chalked it up to feeling a little off-colour and went back to birdwatching.

Being beside Catullus, however, was like an instant circuit-breaker for his attention span. The moment those long, thin limbs folded themselves down beside him, he became hyperaware of the other man's presence. Wishing to see Catullus' eyes on him again - _when had he become so jealous of anything else that shared Catullus' attention?_ \- he risked glancing aside; Catullus was still staring blindly at the sky, eyes open but clearly seeing nothing. Ovid sighed, and tried not to let himself feel the deep and sudden disappointment curling through his ribcage like smoke.

What on earth was happening to him?


	2. Under Infinity

The Rome of his memories was warm.

Warm, and _alive_. A seething, breathing mass of people, often reeking of manure from the horses pulling carts of wares through the streets past bread stalls and men hawking trinkets to gullible women on street corners. There was always somewhere to look and find something new; he could gaze up at the sky and count the clouds, watch birds conduct their aerial ballet with one another as they soared far above him on wings he wished he had. He had always been filled with such pride to be a Roman, to be a part, one tiny building block, of this colossal sprawling city whose empire spread from its city walls to Gaul and beyond. There was nothing in life like Rome, and he missed it.

He missed her as well. As many times as he had seen Clodia wander past the small villa he occupied, swathed as ever in her rich fabrics and jewellery, dresses cinched around her slim waist, he felt a deep and distant longing for everything she represented to him. She was his love, his life, the joy and the pain of his existence; everything he felt was encompassed in this one woman, with her sleek curled hair and wicked, dancing eyes. She was old Rome to him, the Rome he remembered from centuries - millennia - past. To them, Clodia was a woman. To Catullus, she was, and always had been, a universe encompassed in a woman's body, a universe he wanted to hold and keep for himself and be drawn into, to live with her in it as halves of a whole. He wanted to be bound in the claustrophobic cocoon of bedsheets tangled around their interlinked bodies, drowning in and _becoming_ that universe, birthing stars and supernovas every time she touched his skin.

The stars meant nothing to the rest of them but lights in the sky; for him they were every kiss he had placed on her body and a thousand more, more than he could ever count, like grains of sand on a beach.  
  


* * *

 

Ovid couldn't find him anywhere.

Horace had told him that the last time he had seen Catullus, it was in the forum these few days (as far as they could count the passage of time) hence. Catullus had been distant in a way he never was, not seeing the world around him nor feeling Ovid's hands brushing his, trying to lace their fingers together. He had eventually risen, made some mumbled excuses nobody had clearly heard, and disappeared in the direction of the more densely-populated neighbourhood of their afterlife. He had thought perhaps Catullus might have gone to visit his brother, but apparently Catullus hadn't been seen in the vicinity for quite a while, so that idea was shot down before it had really had time to get off the ground.

Inspiration struck whilst he was walking along the streets - trying not to twist his unfortunately newly delicate ankles on the cobblestones - towards the agora; Catullus had made little secret of how much he missed his puella since realising she, like the rest of their personal acquaintances, seemed to be here also, and perhaps he might have gone to visit her? The idea that Catullus was still chasing after an old and self-professed disinterested love did curious things to his stomach - set a boiling anger and deep, sympathetic ache roiling inside him - but Ovid followed the only lead he had, and was rewarded with the sight of his friend waiting outside the woman's house, looking more miserable than he had seen him in a long time.

"Catullus!"

His friend blinked slowly, as though trying to clear his head, and looked up. His face broke into a smile when he saw Ovid and he reached out to embrace his friend, casting a slightly pained glance back at the shuttered windows of the house before allowing himself to be led away down the street towards the forum.

"You've been avoiding us all," Ovid said, only half-pretending to pout, and Catullus laughed softly, shaking his head.

"Avoiding you all? Perhaps some," Catullus said, familiar mischievous grin making Ovid's pulse flutter weakly, "Seneca, perhaps, after that poem. But never you, old friend. Never you."

Ovid smiled, hand cupping his elbow, and gently steered him toward the theatre, which was empty but for a few people milling around the seats, chattering  to friends. He selected a high bench towards the back, hoping that they would be undisturbed if he chose a more secluded area. Catullus followed happily enough, but there was a dejected slope to his shoulders and a furtive sadness in his gaze that Ovid didn't take heart in.

"Are you alright?" he asked, as gently as he could manage. Catullus infamously struggled with some of the harsher realities of their current state, and could sink into a deep gloom when forced to confront certain unsavoury truths. Lucretius had assuaged a little of it the first time it had happened, but perhaps he had fallen prey to that depression again, and just needed a shoulder to cry on. Ovid hoped so; it would be easier to at least attempt to listen and cheer him up that way, rather than fix some more deep-seated emotional or physical issue on his own.

Catullus nodded absently, toying with the edge of his toga. He seemed to be biting down on something he wanted to say, and Ovid itched to pry and ask him about it, but knew that if he forced Catullus to talk about anything clearly this serious before he was ready, his friend would withdraw behind the cheerful mask he always wore to deflect attention from himself and his troubles. It was a delicate balancing act, and although he was often too obtuse to manage it properly, he was determined to learn.

Catullus was important enough to him for that.

"I'm fine. I went to visit Clodia, I thought perhaps she might be able to help a little... It's a strange kind of loneliness I'm feeling, I think, as though the people I care about are leaving me behind..." He sighed and straightened up, wriggling his shoulders and smiling. It didn't reach his eyes, always so expressive, and Ovid's heart gave a twinge. Something was deeply wrong... something he definitely would not be able to fix with simply a shoulder and a smile. "But I'm being silly," Catullus grinned, and ran a frail hand through his wild hair. "It's nothing, of course."

"We would never leave you behind, Catullus," Ovid said seriously, trying to impress upon his friend the truth of this statement, "I guarantee it. You matter to all of us too much for that. We love you, you know that."

"I do know that," Catullus smiled softly, patting Ovid's hand, "of course. Thank you."  
  


* * *

 

The party at the villa was everything one might expect from festivities thrown by Catullus. Full of the sounds of revelry, of drunken and half-drunken chatter over cups of wine, of jokes being told and laughed over by friends and acquaintances within their wide circle. The house was alight with the constant streaming white glare from outside, but vibrant with laughter and camaraderie. The only thing conspicuously absent from the party was the host himself.

Ovid was more than a little drunk when he realised that he hadn't seen Catullus all night and, filled with the liquid courage of rather too much alcohol for someone of his diminutive stature, he decided to go and find him and work out together what this strange attraction between the pair of them was. It simmered beneath his skin like a pot on the brink of boiling; smothering his usual bravado and slick charm under an uncomfortable, unfamiliar nervousness that set him slightly on edge and made him trip over his words like a schoolboy trying to seduce a young lady, palms slick with sweat and tongue thick in his mouth.

And then there was the other frustrated heat sitting rather further south, below his beltline...

Ovid found his target laid on the grass outside, staring up at the sky with a pained expression on his face, and flopped down beside him - much more heavily than he had intended to - with an 'oof!' Catullus didn't look up, instead keeping his eyes towards the empty sky, reflecting nothing but cold light in his green irises.

"Why are you out here?"

"I needed air. Space. Everything we've too much of here, and not enough at the same time." Catullus' voice was bitter, angry, and he tore a handful of grass out of the ground with a jerky movement he didn't seem wholly in control of. "Nothing but air and space and this stupid light, can't even have nightfall to watch the sun go down or see the stars come out-"

"The stars are out," Ovid said bravely, a queasy liquid feeling in his stomach that told him to tread carefully before he said something he'd regret. "They're out here, look." He pointed, trying to reach Catullus'  freckled hand. Ovid saw the tip of his finger brush the skin - sure he'd felt it, soft as silk and cool to the touch, and he was leaning in to do something incredibly stupid - and Catullus yanked his hand away as if burned, scrambling a couple of feet away from him on the grass like a startled crab.

Catullus' expression was unreadable when he finally, finally looked at him. "Don't," he said, softly, quietly, full of misery, and Ovid's heart sank.

"Why not? I-"

"No." Catullus got up, too quickly. "You can't. I'm... I'm not well. Please, Ovidius..." He sighed heavily, seemingly on the verge of tears. "Whatever it is you think you need to say... not today. Not now. I can't hear it now."

He left Ovid lying there, feeling sick. Wondering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Stairs by Jóhann Jóhannsson: [x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbWGrhlnC6E) (on YouTube).


	3. Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Actual chest ache, writing this. It’s kind of an interlude, kind of a third chapter - I meant to write something completely different that actually furthers the plot more, but this happened instead and I love it so much it needs to be in the actual story. I’m shameless, I know. Sorry.
> 
> Sorry not sorry about the song choice. I'm lame enough to genuinely enjoy that song.

Catullus sat at his window, tears prickling his eyes as he watched Ovid lying on the ground two storeys below, his round face crumpled with distress. His heart ached, and he turned his face away, rubbing angrily at his eyes. Confusion roiled in his head, struggling to understand the expression of pain and rejection in Ovid's eyes when he had pulled his hand away. Ovid had never given the impression before that that was anything he had wanted - that, like Catullus, his heart skipped whenever he laid eyes on the other, and that the touch of their hands was like sparks between them, fireworks that crackled invisibly over every nerve ending until he burned for any reprieve, be it more or less of that hypersensitive contact.

He wished he could see the stars. They had always calmed him, but the sky was a plain, empty white, a suffocatingly blank canvas. There was nothing there but the constricting airlessness of open space, and he gasped for breath as he tried to somehow claw more air into the room, but the windows were just holes in the wall and air isn't something he can grasp, and he felt that thickness in his lungs making him wheeze and pant and he couldn't drag anything in, tears streaming down his face and he kept making horrible gurgling sounds as he choked on nothing at all and there was so much panic in him, rising like a tide threatening to swallow him-  
  


* * *

 

Ovid found him when the party had wound down, collapsed against the window with a face the colour of ashes and deep, livid scratches on his throat and chest, blood under his nails as though he'd tried to tear out his own lungs. He gently manoeuvred his friend's limp body into his arms and moved him to the bed, Catullus seeming to tumble almost through his encompassing arms onto the rumpled sheets. He thought for a minute about leaving him there to recuperate on his own, but given the evident distress he'd been in before whatever had made him faint, it would be cruel to force him to wake up to face that again alone. He laid down beside Catullus instead, fighting down the urgent thrumming of his pulse and those parts of his brain that went into overdrive, again, at being so close to Catullus, and ran his fingers lightly over Catullus' pale freckled cheeks, smiling when it made light blond lashes flutter and his eyes open weakly.

Catullus arched off the bed with a frantic gasp, throwing his arms wide like a drowning man breaking the surface; Ovid quickly grabbed him around his middle and drew him close, like a father comforting a crying child. Catullus didn't fight him as he had earlier, scrambling away; instead he pressed closer, body trembling, and Ovid felt hot tears soak through his tunic as Catullus shivered in his arms.

"It's alright," he said, a little helplessly, trying to soothe his friend's panic any way he could; he rubbed Catullus' back with one plump palm and mumbled abstract nothings until the trembling calmed a little and his friend made a wet sobbing noise that let him know that Catullus was at least able to breathe now.

"Was it another of your panic attacks?"

"I felt I couldn't breathe," Catullus mumbled into his shoulder, his lashes tickling the side of Ovid's throat as he nestled his head in the crook of Ovid's shoulder. "I was looking out of the window, and then - and then it was as though it was pressing a cloth over my face, there was something in my chest, I couldn't get enough air even to scream-"

He was shaking again, and Ovid shushed him gently, smoothing a hand over Catullus' ruffled curls. There was an abject empty terror in those dear green eyes when they finally rose to look at him.

"I felt I was dying. Do you understand?" Catullus asked desperately, needing him to understand. And Ovid did, a little. He nodded, continuing to run his fingers through Catullus' hair; it was damp with sweat, tousled from his fingers, but it was a real part of Catullus in his hands, and he couldn't bring himself to stop. The way Catullus leant into it as though Ovid was all that was keeping him grounded did little to discourage him, either. He ached to lean down a little, press his lips to that delicate freckled forehead, even just as a chaste expression of friendship; it felt as though that would be breaking down the floodgates, striking the match that starts the forest fire. Instead, he just nodded.

"It's so empty. I think that's what frightens me most. There's nothing there - a complete absence of anything at all. I was always so afraid of death, thinking that that was what awaited me, this nothingness. But instead I'm here, with my friends and my puella and a Rome I can almost remember, almost recognise - and it makes me even more afraid. Because everything the gods have given me now, they can take away. What happens when we reach the end of our time here, if that's something that can happen? I've been given so much, and it's so easy to take it all away again-"

"That won't happen," Ovid said fiercely. "It won't. I promise. I won't let them, Catullus, I won't let them take it from you. I'll fight the gods myself."

Catullus laughed weakly. "Like Achilles?"

"Like Diomedes. Diomedes actually did them some damage." Ovid smoothed a thumb over Catullus' brow, and finally let himself brush his lips over Catullus' clammy skin. As Catullus' eyes closed and he leaned in, Ovid felt it. That sweet ache that always started in his ribcage and spread, curling through every inch of his body like smoke, whenever he got too close to Catullus. The one that left a trembling hollow _need_ in its wake that could only be filled by Catullus, everything he could possibly give Ovid and more. A chasm had opened inside him, and he was powerless to do anything but seek out the person who could fill it for him.

 _I love him_. The thought made him pause, but he couldn't deny it now that his mind had expressed the words. He loved Catullus, and, more than that, he was _in love_ with Catullus. The soul-deep feeling of companionship he felt whenever the other man was beside him suddenly made sense. They weren't friends, as Atticus and Cicero were friends - men who bickered like an old married couple and exchanged letters the length of their arms to one another, decorated one another's houses with statues bought on their travels; no. He loved Catullus, from the bottom of whatever this empty, aching hole inside him was, until he felt he could die all over again from it. The yearning to be with him, to see his eyes meet Ovid's own, to feel his hands on his skin - not even in a sexual manner, although there was a whole other part of Ovid who burned to feel Catullus' lips caressing his body, and to count his soft freckles with his tongue. He had become, in this new universe, the gravital point around which Ovid found himself orbiting.  
  


* * *

 

He climbed off the bed, ignoring the tug in his stomach at leaving Catullus' side, and shuttered the windows. Crossing back across the room to the bed, Ovid folded the canopies around them, enclosing them in a cocoon of dark cloth whose intricate patterns looked like stars and galaxies in the velvet of a dark winter sky. He lay back down next to his friend on the bed and pointed them out, taking Catullus' hand to point to each in turn and create their own constellations.

"It's almost dark, with these closed. See how these look like the stars? This could be Phoenix, see, because there's a curlicue here that looks like his wings." Ovid traced one slightly misshapen stitch, watching Catullus' eyes trace the design as his finger ran over it, and smiled softly. His friend evidently hadn't noticed, but his breathing had levelled out to a steady, healthy in-and-out, and Ovid could almost fancy he heard his heart beating in Catullus' thin chest. They lay together, side-by-side, inside their tiny universe, and he allowed himself to close his eyes in contentment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Hero_ by Enrique Iglesias: [x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koJlIGDImiU) (on YouTube).


	4. My Only Sunshine, i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's going to be two chapters with this same title, which is why this one is _My Only Sunshine, i_. Just sayin'.

For a passing age, it seemed, they lay, sleeping in their shaded bed, canopies of stars drawn around them. Nobody disturbed them; instead they were allowed their peace and solitude, like resting princes, twined around one another until it was difficult to tell where one sleeping body ended and the other began, mixed curls splayed out on the pillows beneath their heads like twin haloes, light and dark. Ovid's eyes opened first, and he indulged himself in another age of watching Catullus sleep, tracing long, lithe limbs with his gaze, fingers gently - chastely - pushing tunic and toga aside to free the creases of his knees and elbows where the fabric had collected in folds like concertinaed secrets. There was such a beauty in his calmness, he couldn't stand to let anything wake him; and they were lucky, truly, that their bodies no longer needed such lifely things as food, water and air; instead, they were free to do as they pleased without bodily restriction.

Ovid ran his fingers lightly over one freckled calf, smiling when Catullus' leg twitched as his fingers played with the soft hair furring the peach-smooth skin. He didn't think about what lay, dormant and soft, beneath the folds of his friend's clothing; he had a millennia yet to explore every inch of Catullus' body, and he could save that until last. First he wanted to know what it would be like to love this man for everything else; sexuality was something that no longer felt as burningly necessary as it once had. Catullus was a virgin prince to him, somebody he couldn't cheapen and sully with greedy fingertips before he was ready. And Ovid himself felt almost born anew; both of them were like children, still with clumsy limbs and shy, awkward smiles as they awoke beside each other, still entangled and yet knowing nothing untoward had happened. They were still enveloped in this simple, chaste happiness; their second age of innocence.  
  


* * *

 

The air in the forum was light, the breeze cool and playful on their skin as it whipped their hair into disarray and toyed with their clothing, and Catullus was laughing like a small boy as he chased leaves dancing on the breeze across the open space. Ovid followed, affectionate, both of them ignoring the curious glances and occasional snide asides from bystanders, and allowed himself to enjoy this lightness of being. The people criticising them for their expression of joy didn't understand, and never would; they had never seen this exuberant, bright-eyed creature in front of him seem to fade almost to nothing, before Ovid himself had managed to bring him back.

They sat on the steps for hours, talking about home. Ovid remembered sunsets as bright as jewels, streaming ribbons of colour as the sun sank further and further behind the grand buildings of the city until the sky was awash with bruised purples and crimsons, and the gods opened their hands to throw a scattering of diamond stars across the canvas of night. He would try to sketch it in Catullus' mind with the hues of women's dresses, wildflowers nestling shyly in the grass between their toes, any way he could; Catullus' laughter, bright as lemons, would let him know when he succeeded.

"I miss the sea," Catullus said one afternoon, as they walked along one of the lesser-populated side streets. As soon as he said it, Ovid could smell it on the wind, taste the salt in the air and hear the rush of waves in his ears. He nodded as Catullus continued: "I miss so much, sometimes. There's the sea - the way it shifted, its moods and violent temper and its sweetness when it was placid and moonlit and sleeping. Much like my puella." He laughed, and Ovid had to laugh with him. Clodia was certainly like the sea, it had to be said, although perhaps not in the way Catullus meant. To Ovid, Clodia was a drowning, suffocating presence in Catullus' life - smothering this light in him under waves of rejection and temper, trying to drag him down until the water hid the sun and the stars from his eyes, but perhaps Catullus was - had always been, really - more like a buoy. As much as Clodia had tried to sink him, he remained afloat.

"I miss the sea also," Ovid said, watching Catullus' eyes flicker to his face and the corners of his lips twitch upwards like cresting waves, "but I have to say, I don't miss the sand. Or, I don't miss the way it would inevitably find its way into crevices I didn't know I had, whenever I sat!"

Catullus burst into laughter, nodding his agreement. Ovid grinned at him, pleased to have made him smile. Catullus reached for his hand and squeezed gently, affection and a soft, tentative kind of sweetness in his gaze as he looked over Ovid's face, settling seemingly involuntarily on his lips. Ovid felt his pulse throb dully, excitement thrumming through him, and squeezed back. Catullus shook his head lightly as if to clear it, and Ovid bit back another smile.

"What else do you miss?"

"I miss... being human, I suppose. Being a person." Catullus said slowly, consideringly. "I miss being alive. Things like feeling my heart jump when I fell in love. Feeling my cheeks go hot when I blushed, or feeling that rush of energy whenever I admitted something that had frightened me or been nagging away at the inside of my brain for too long. I miss the human experience."

"I know," said Ovid, and he did. He missed, when holding Catullus' hand, that warmth of another person's skin against his own, instead of this coolness and slight clamminess of the dead. He missed the rosy glow of health in his own face and others', hyperaware of how pallid their new complexions had become, and of the livid dark circles around their eyes. Thankfully he and Catullus had escaped the more physically-affecting deaths of other members of the society - Lucretius, with the deep mottled scarring of the noose still around his neck, or Cicero and Petronius with their jagged, purplish wounds. In comparison, he and Catullus looked the picture of health, in fact - but there was still, even in the way they looked, that nagging reminder of things being not exactly as perfect as he might have wished. "I miss the warmth," he said, somewhat lamely, and Catullus smiled and nodded.

"Me too."

"And the sound of a heartbeat, or breathing, when I lay my head on your chest. I know you can breathe if you want to, but since we don't need to it always seems unnecessary, doesn't it? And I wouldn't want you to act for me, just because you felt I would like it."

Catullus' expression upon hearing that admission was unreadable, until the tears started to glisten at the edges of his eyes and Ovid felt a paroxysm of panic grip his gut in a clenched fist.

"Did I - say something wrong?"

Catullus laughed softly, barely even an exhalation of breath, and shook his head, pressing the pads of his thumbs to the corners of his eyes to stop the tears from spilling. "No, no, of course not."

Ovid let out his held breath.

"On the contrary, you said something... just right."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _You Are My Sunshine_ by Elizabeth Mitchell: [x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhntWIIbWBs) (on YouTube).


	5. Collapsing Inwards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is where it starts getting really sad, folks. Also, beware tense/style changes.

As they settled into this new routine, they began seeing more and more of each other. After long days spent wandering their tight-knit little world, when they were tired and ready to rest aching legs and feet, Catullus would often invite Ovid into his bed, protesting that they spent all of their time together anyway. But Ovid read the glimmering wet hope in his eyes differently and, so he hoped, correctly; Catullus just didn't want to sleep alone any more. And of course he was more than happy to prevent him from having to do so. They'd close the canopies and fall asleep in each other's arms again, Ovid often trying to stay awake longest to be able to see Catullus' anxious energy relax into the deep somnolent peace of sleep, and to count his freckles like the stars. Sometimes he'd lose count and have to start again; he didn't mind.

He never minded.  
  


* * *

  
This time, they'd found a shady tree whose canopy of broad leaves shielded their eyes from most of the glare, and Catullus was resting with his back against the tree and Ovid's head in his lap, eyes closed and enjoying the sensation of Catullus' fingers gently carding through his hair. Catullus teased him that whenever he was stroked like this he made a loud, rumbling purring noise in his chest like a cat, so Ovid picked up two fallen leaves from the ground and tucked them behind his head to give the appearance of pointed ears. Catullus burst out laughing, stomach muscles tensing and fluttering under Ovid's head, and Ovid grinned, inordinately pleased with himself as he always was when he managed to make Catullus laugh.

Catullus was mumbling lines of poetry to himself as he ran his fingers through Ovid's hair, winding coarse curls around his fingers and tugging gently every so often when Ovid arced his neck to settle his head more comfortably against him.

"It should be me in that position," he grinned, prodding Ovid's cheek with one slim finger. "It would certainly be more comfortable for both of us. You've more padding, and won't be banging your head on my ribs when you squirm every five minutes."

"That's undoubtedly true," Ovid said, eyes closed, "but I'm too lazy to move and swap, so it's to be this way around." He cracked an eye open and grinned at Catullus, who rolled his eyes fondly and picked his book back up, lips moving as he read to himself under his breath. Ovid smirked, satisfied, and closed his eyes again, enjoying the gentle massage.

Catullus' chest rose and fell beneath his cheek as he allowed himself to doze contentedly, drifting off into fantasies...  
  


* * *

_  
Catullus takes his hand, his eyes shimmering the colour of agate, like sunlight glinting off the sea's rolling, white-crested summer waves as they lap gently at the shore, and Ovid's breath catches in his chest. Catullus' lips are slightly open, thin but rosy red with blood where he's biting the corner of his lower lip anxiously, eyes scouring Ovid's face for a sign that this is right, or wrong. Ovid can hardly breathe; he'd always assumed it would be him making the first move in this particular chess game, him moving to place Catullus in check before the younger man - a boy, really - moved to meet him or run away._

_Catullus doesn't run. Instead, his fingers tangle gently in the loose curls at the nape of Ovid's neck, and he leans in a little, breath feathering over his skin. Every touch is electric, and he smells like mint as though he's been chewing on the leaves of the plants beside them, a fragrant dreamscape Ovid never wants to leave, not while this Catullus is looking achingly at his lips, fighting himself over whether or not to lean in and take them. He hopes, of course, that he will. Catullus has always been predictable in love affairs, for good or for ill; but he doesn't dare presume. To go in too heavily now will frighten Catullus away like a startled rabbit. A flash of those hypnotic green eyes, and then he'd be gone._

_So Ovid sits, still as stone, and waits. There's a few moments of Catullus leaning forward, and then sharply back as if chastising himself; fidgeting against the tree with anxious, fluttering hand movements as he clutches Ovid's hair tighter and then releases it. Eventually he quivers, and something seems to snap; he leans in, eyes squeezed closed as if forcing himself to do it before he can chicken out, and their lips meet._

_It's soft, clumsy, more of a rubbing together of lips and awkwardly-fitting mouths before Ovid adjusts himself a little, placing a hand behind Catullus' head against the tree to brace his weight, and then, **then** , they're fitted together like jigsaw pieces, a lock and a key. Trading lazy, slow slides of their mouths against each other, occasionally brushing tongues when one of them gets a little more daring. Catullus sighs, and Ovid slides his free arm around Catullus' waist, playing with the back of his toga and gently encouraging him to come a little closer. He does, with a soft exhalation of pleasure against Ovid's lips, and Ovid smiles into the kiss, breaking the connection briefly to nose at Catullus' jaw._

_He tips his head back slightly and Ovid places more slow, amorous kisses over the paper-thin skin there. So pale he's almost translucent, cool under Ovid's lips as his breathing stutters. Ovid misses the thudding of a pulse under his fingers as he kisses further down Catullus' neck, following the muscle down towards his shoulder-_   
  


* * *

  
A gasp woke him from the reverie. Catullus was shaking beneath him, his breathing sharp and fast, _scared_. Ovid sat bolt upright and turned to face him; Catullus' face was like ashes, his eyes sightless and panic-stricken as he removed trembling hands from Ovid's hair.

"What - what's the matter?" he asked, trying to take Catullus' hand, touch his cheek, anything to ground him when he was shaking like a leaf and visibly on the edge of another panic attack. "Catullus, what's wrong?"

"I - I have to go," Catullus choked out, flinching away from him. "I'm sorry!"

"Catullus, wait! Tell me, what's wrong? You can trust me, you know that - what did I do? Have I upset you?" He knew he'd be blushing if he was capable, remembering the thoughts he'd been lost in before this explosive panic from his friend. Catullus' lips on his, his body pliant and opening like a summer bloom under Ovid's ministrations-

"No, Ovidius!" Catullus shouted, voice high-pitched and rough with fear. He was almost screaming at him, every inch of his body shaking with fear, and he scratched at his arms as though there were insects crawling under his skin, and it seemed to panic him even more - Ovid tried to grasp his wrist, but either Catullus moved away too fast or he hadn't managed to quite close his fingers around the bony limb because it was like grasping air - Catullus was in tears, cradling his arms against his chest, shaking his head.

"You don't understand! You can't! I need - I need to go -"

"Where? Catullus, answer me! Calm down! What's wrong?"

"Nothing! I just - I just need to get away!" He started to back away, leaving his book behind on the ground. Ovid picked it up and tried to follow, but Catullus had begun to run, and was already leaving him in the dust, frantic legs scrambling helplessly over the dusty ground as he raced away.

"Away from what?" Ovid asked desperately, breaking into a run himself. He couldn't understand what Catullus was doing - why was he so afraid? Nothing had happened - and then his body went cold, as though someone had sluiced his veins with ice water. He must have said something - done something he wasn't aware of, and that's why Catullus was fleeing from him as though he were diseased - but what was it? What could possibly have provoked this reaction?

He stopped as if frozen on the spot. Had he kissed him, really? Was that what Catullus was trying to escape - trying to get away from _him_? He cursed violently, furious with himself. How many times had he told himself to approach slowly, to ease Catullus into it to prevent exactly this happening? He'd done exactly what he knew he would do, and scared Catullus away. He wanted to kick himself.

Another, worse thought occurred to him. What if he'd got it wrong in the first place? Had he misinterpreted those leaning-in moments where their mouths had almost touched, or the times when Catullus seemed to reach for his hand before snatching it back shyly? Did the "Are you coming to bed?"s just mean that he was lonely and wanted a friend, and Ovid in his constant hypersexuality had interpreted it as Catullus warming to him? He'd gotten too close, pressured him too much - perhaps he thought Ovid would be angry with him if he didn't indulge these perverse whims for more and more contact between their bodies, or felt too threatened by a larger, heavier man half-on top of him to refuse? Catullus, always so eager to please - what had he done?  
  


* * *

  
Catullus stared in horror at his arms. His hands, one minute stroking Ovid's coarse dark curls, toying with one particular lock as Ovid smiled and nuzzled his nose against Catullus' arm, lips moving gently as he sighed with what Catullus assumed was contentment - and then seeming to pass through Ovid's skull as though reaching into his brain. Only for a moment, but that moment was more than enough to make him panic. Flickering in and out of solidity like this could never be a good sign. He tried to close the shutters, but couldn't grasp them to drag them closed - his fingers passed through the metal latches as though they were air.

He threw himself down on the bed, inordinately glad that his torso and legs still seemed solid enough for the mattress to cup them instead of allowing him to fall straight through, like a shade. He ended up dragging the canopy curtains closed with his teeth, and curled into a ball, hot tears soaking the material beneath his cheek as he stared into empty white space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Collapsing Inwards_ by Jóhann Jóhansson: [x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1QD2tOag9c) (on YouTube).


	6. Remembering/Imaginarium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catullus begins to sink further down the rabbit hole (if you'll forgive the _Alice in Wonderland_ reference.) Also, I gave myself feels, and I wasn't ready for them. Damn it, Alex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We don't know what Catullus' brother was called, nor whether he was older or younger than Catullus himself. I've plumped for another headcanon of Lucrezia's that his name was Lucius and he was the elder brother.

The world was fragmenting around him, slowly shattering apart and combining in new, unfamiliar, scary ways, as though he were an insect trapped in a kaleidoscope, watching the colours swirl around him but able to do nothing about it. Everything around him changed. Everything around him became more beautiful.

First, the sky. Always that blank white, but whenever he looked up at it, he'd swear he could see tiny spots of colour, as though someone were pushing a pin through a white sheet to show the blue brilliance behind. At night, there would be hints of the glowing of stars, the multitude of glittering diamonds scattered over the Roman sky wheeling behind the white dome of the heavens, and every so often, he would catch a glimpse of them. Feel that light pour into his chest, filling him up like water in a glass from his feet to the crown of his head; he swore, seeing that starlight, that he, too, glowed. And his fear abated. Perhaps this was the feeling of a slow rebirth; returning to the mortal world as he knew it, seeing the blank sky pierced with shafts of orange sunsets and deep, violet nights.

Second, the air. It grew sweeter, almost unbearably clear, in his lungs, until he felt like every breath would burst his chest like a balloon. He would feel the breeze chafe his skin, stirring the light hairs into goosebumps, and feel as though every gust were blowing off one layer at a time, removing all the skins of past lives he had lived until this new birth, now, would take him back to his beloved Rome. Inside, the air grew thick and moist like molasses, filling his mouth with tastes and smells he could almost remember from all of those years ago. But only almost.

Third, the ground. His steps slowed to a crawl, then almost a dead stop, as though he were wading through molasses. The grass buckled and slopped around his feet like quicksand, swallowing his ankles, and it took a great force of effort to drag himself out of its tender hold to take the next step. Exhaustion would overcome him quickly, and he would fall asleep under wheeling heavens, the great white dome showing more and more cracks every day, sinking further into the ground as though falling onto a thick feather mattress.  
  


* * *

  
The new world swallowed him slowly, piece by piece. His was an altered perception. Familiar horizons of forum buildings, statuesque and blindingly white marble, would glimmer and fade behind a haze of fresh imaginings, and he would see his parents' villa at Sirmio, his brother waving from the front gate, somehow still half a child with his gangling legs and gapped teeth. He would reach the villa to find Lucius disappeared, but could still hear his laughter ringing through the house's halls, laughing cries of his name echoing around the yard.

"Gaius! Gaius!"

The shouts of his name would always be accompanied by the sound of children's footsteps, one away from him, the other towards; and then, out of nowhere, a young boy - barely older than five winters - would come streaking out of the darkness, with Catullus' familiar green eyes and pale, freckled skin, calling his brother's name in response. The sight jarred him at first, the thought of Lucius having had children unfamiliar and frightening, but it took very little time to realise that he was watching himself and his brother at play as children, always running through the halls and getting under Mother's feet. He would run after, try to chase the boys through the house, but Lucius would always be too many steps ahead for him to catch more than the flash of a purple-edged tunic around a door frame or the laughing tease of his voice.

"Lucius!" The child - he - would call, straining to catch up on shorter legs, skidding over the mosaic floors like a newborn colt, still getting used to the spindly limbs of a child rather than the stocky toddler's legs he'd had for so long. Always too young, too far away. Guilt came soon after, and memories of the rites at his brother's tomb; he longed to see the familiar face, so like his own, almost more than he longed to finally join him, wherever he was. Perhaps this afterlife he was so used to was not his heaven, merely some kind of hellish limbo in-between where everyone he had known and loved was, as ever, a little out of his reach.

No. Maybe that wasn't fair. His friends were here - his friends with their vivacity and kindness and their patience. Ovid in particular, with those liquid dark eyes he loved so dearly, always with their spark of mischief. Ovid, who could brighten any mood slump with his pure presence, the last true light left in Catullus' life until the stars through the cracks. He had loved ones close, after all. But they seemed to have abandoned him. For days - because now, with the breaking apart of the upturned bowl of the sky above him, he could begin to tell days and nights - he had seen neither hide nor hair of any of the other Romans. But then, he had wandered a long way, to have gone from Rome to Sirmio. Perhaps he should be heading back.  
  


* * *

  
"Has anyone seen Catullus?"

Every moment of passing time was agony to Ovid. After his flight the last time they had met, he hadn't even caught a glimpse of Catullus at his window. He was never home when Ovid visited, desperate to see him, and none of the others had any idea where he could be hiding. In fact, many of them seemed to have assumed he was with Ovid; the two of them had a reputation for being joined at the hip, and the others seemed genuinely surprised and concerned that Catullus had apparently abandoned all of them, Ovid included. Gods only knew where he'd got to, although if they did, they were keeping quiet about it. Ovid had been to the temples of no less than six different gods trying to ask, and had been turned away from every one without even the slightest clue. He was giving up hope.

It was Vergil who finally broke their silence. "I saw him in the quiet spot where I usually like to sit," he said in his soft, hesitant voice, blue eyes wary as he gazed up at Ovid from behind his book, "but he seemed... absorbed. I don't feel that we should disturb him."

"Take me to him," Ovid gasped, sinking to his knees before his friend in a position of supplication. "Please. Please, Vergilius, I - I have to see him."

Vergil bit his lip, hesitant, but eventually acquiesced and climbed gracefully to his feet. Petronius, Horace and Lucretius all offered to come along, but Ovid declined. He knew his friends were as eager to see Catullus as he was, but this was a meeting that had to be conducted in private, between just the two of them. He'd even ask Vergil to leave when they actually found him, to spare himself the humiliation of witnesses to his rejection by Catullus. The kiss, of course. He was almost sure it had happened, but, shrouded as it was in almost a fever dream, he couldn't be certain. Perhaps he had only imagined the press of their lips, imagined the soft sigh of Catullus' breathing mingling with his own, the rub of their fingers lacing together.  
  


* * *

  
He was sat with his back against the trunk of a tree, gazing at the sky with sightless eyes, when they found him. The air felt trapped in Ovid's lungs as he stared at him, taking in the waifishly thin limbs and pallid skin, dusted with freckles like dandelions in a meadow. He raced towards him, stumbling over tree roots and his own feet in his haste, but Catullus didn't seem to hear. He was smiling, hands tugging idly at the grass beneath his delicate hands. Ovid's heavy footfalls didn't turn his head; he seemed deaf and blind to everything around him.

"Catullus!" Ovid cried, hoping to startle him out of his reverie. Catullus frowned, confusion crossing his face, before turning towards them. His gaze seemed to pass right through Ovid, despite him waving his hand in front of his face and clicking his fingers to gain his attention.

"Catullus - Catullus, I'm here - Ovid-"

Vergil was fidgeting awkwardly behind them, wringing his hands a little. He was evidently finding it hard to look at Catullus, because his gaze shifted around everywhere but at their friend in front of him. Ovid turned to him in desperation, still trying to snap Catullus out of whatever daze he was caught in.  
"Catullus, please-"

"Ovidius, perhaps... perhaps we should leave him. He's... absorbed, as I said."

"No! I won't, I won't leave him like this, he has to come back - Catullus, can you hear me?"

Catullus broke into a smile, reaching to lay a hand on his shoulder. His fingers felt lighter than a butterfly's wings, the touch barely perceptible on Ovid's skin.

"Lucius, do you hear? Ovidius is here, my friend-" His face fell. "Lucius? Lucius, where-" Catullus' eyes slowly focused on Ovid's face, blowing wide with shock and he stumbled a couple of steps backwards before catching himself on the tree trunk.

"Ov-Ovidius," he said weakly. "I - forgive me, I didn't see you there. I'm a little... disoriented."

"I've been searching everywhere for you," Ovid murmured urgently, groping for Catullus' hand without taking his eyes from the other man's face. "Please, you've been hiding for long enough. Come back."

"Hiding? I was at home," Catullus said in confusion. "You came to see me-"

"No, Catullus, I didn't. Well, actually I did, I went frequently to your house to try and find you, but you weren't there - you had us all in a frantic state looking for you-"

"I don't understand," Catullus said softly, his brows knit over troubled green eyes.

"...No," Ovid agreed heavily, "no, I don't, either."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Portuguese Love Theme by Craig Armstrong: [[x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1cugZ3d1Zo)] (on YouTube)


	7. Stay With Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God I'm so horrifically rusty at this verse, I'm so sorry if this is awful, I just want to finish this because it's been hanging over my head for so long and I felt like an asshole for not writing it sooner!
> 
> I'm so sorry ugh

The best way he could think to explain it - to himself and to others - was that he no longer felt numb. No longer was he fading into the blank, too-bright whiteness of this second home; instead, he felt the phantom warmth of Roman summer sun on his skin, and could taste the baking bread and smell the press of people and lemons in the groves outside of the city and olives dripping oil from overburdened branches. He felt _alive_ , in the truest sense. No longer just existing on the current plane, but alive.

Blue. The sky was so blue - deep, brilliant aquamarine, like sea waves, foamed with the blinding whiteness of before, but the colour was beginning to bubble through, to bleed over Catullus' skin and wash him with the scent of being alive. Their new world had always been so dead, so dull. They had been alive, but barely - every touch was a ghost over their skin, every word a whisper in their ears, every sight on the horizon a mirage. Fading from that world into this, where colour and sound and scent sliced through the white dullness to prick and tease at every inch of his body, made everything overwhelming almost to the point of pain. Trying to drink the long-missed sensations in too fast, until his head spun and he felt weak and dizzy.

Weakness was all too familiar. His last hours on earth during his first life had been spent coughing the blood from his lungs, his head thick with sickness, ribcage tight. He could barely stand. Now, he stood in the centre of a wavering Rome, one minute solid and golden with sunlight beneath palms as strong and vital as ever he had been, and the next, all bleached and sapped of life. The constant flickering between sensory overload and deprivation made his head swim and his stomach roil; he felt himself slipping between the realms of Jupiter and Dis, the cold hands of the gods dragging him one way and then the other. Lethe burbled around the limits of the city as night in his Rome began to fall; Catullus sat by her waters, dipping his fingers in and out, enjoying the bursts of peace that washed over his mind.

The cooling city air echoed with a soft, faintly familiar voice calling his name: _Catullus, Catullus_ \- by his patronymic, so surely not his brother. His brother... what had his brother been called? L... Lucius. _Lux_. His light. Lucius, the light of Catullus' early years - dancing through the halls at Sirmio, calling one another's names, playing games of dice and climbing the trees in the grove to feast themselves on ripe fruit. Lucius had weathered with him their father's scoldings, their mother's warm hands straightening his tunic when visitors arrived and both boys were shoved in front of them, crumpled and dust-stained from play. His brother would never call him Catullus...

 _Catullus_ , the voice continued to call. The city, darkened, sky glittering with stars strewn by the hands of the gods, flickered - dimming, fading, to the blank canvas of the second-life Rome; he fought it, trying to clutch at the grass beneath his hands, inhaling deep breaths of lemon-sharp air and blinking with teary eyes at the stars. He tried to engrave every last inch of this Rome on his heart, where it could never be forgotten as the millennia passed and the empire crumbled.

The voice never stopped calling him.  
  


* * *

  
"Catullus!" Ovid gasped, clutching his friend's hand and tugging, hard - trying to physically drag Catullus out of whatever false dream swam in his eyes. He was growing thinner, translucent in the dimming light of their Rome. Virgil had not been to see Catullus since he had helped Ovid to find him that first time; he seemed troubled by Catullus' current state, and had instead retreated to the welcome company of Dante and Horace.

Ovid yanked at Catullus' hand again, so hard he was almost afraid that - like Cicero, whose hands and head tended to loosen themselves from his body if he was overexerted - it would come off in his hand. Catullus blinked slow, sleepy lids at him, eyes glassy and far-focused. Barely seeing Ovid at all.

"Lux," he murmured, a shy smile lightening his lips. "Brother..." He reached out to touch Ovid's cheek, but his finger - pale and clear as glass - sank through Ovid's cheek, who fell back with a hand over his mouth and terrified tears in his eyes, scream muffled into his palm.

"Catullus - Catullus, come back to me, my friend - please - Catullus -"  
  


* * *

  
A figure - blurry, dark around the edges, with his brother's dark liquid eyes and cheeky smile was standing in front of Catullus. Honey-coloured curls tickled the nape of his neck, and his voice as he called - Catullus' family name, strange for Lucius - was strident with worry. Catullus reached out with a smile.

"Lux," he said softly, shaking his head with a quiet laugh. "Brother, why the formality? I'm your brother. Gaius is fine."

Lucius didn't seem to hear him. His voice only grew more worried, louder and more panicked, as Catullus tried to reach for him and wrap his arms around his brother, only to have him fade into the white gloss of the second-life Rome like a spectre. Catullus didn't understand; this was the afterlife. Surely his brother would be here. He had been so sure it was Lucius' voice...

He turned away and walked back the way he came, deeper into the streets of his new Rome, heady with reality. Lucius' voice suddenly echoed out amongst the stone walls of buildings: his brother's young, laughing voice, calling him. _Gaius, Gaius - chase me!_

He thought nothing, bizarrely, of the fact that it was a child Lucius he was hearing; the brother from the villa at Sirmio, only a handful of short years his elder, still in a short boy's tunic. He raced after the sound of his brother's laughter, shouting back "Lucius! Lucius, I'm coming!", searching every street he rushed into for any sign of Lucius' tousled head, the purple edge of his tunic, the slapping of a child's sandals against the flagged streets. There's nothing but the distant voice, the rippling laughter like a running brook, and the sound of his own heartbeat echoing in his ears.

Sky. Darkness, moonlight, stars. The scent of lemons and olives and bread and bodies and shit. The roughness of stone buildings under his hands as he pauses on street corners to catch his breath. The sounds of the city, rumbling carts and lowing oxen and braying donkeys and the hubbub of voices from the auditoriums and the roar of the arena. Things he had missed so desperately in his time away from this Rome; signs of life returning to his body, strengthening his limbs.

Only the flickering, haphazard and unexpected, bothered him.  
  


* * *

 _  
There is something wrong with Catullus_ , Ovid told them desperately as he gathered them in the forum to discuss their friend. _He doesn't see us, can't hear us, can't feel my hands on his skin; he is, for all intents and purposes, numb to the world. Dis is calling him, louder and louder, away from this semi-life and into some oblivion only he can see; Catullus seems more than willing to go. It's... It's me, selfish and frantic, who refuses to let him._

Virgil remained quiet. Horace immediately stepped up to comfort Ovid with a gentle hand on his shoulder, insisting that it wasn't selfish to want a dear friend to stay where he's known to be safe and loved, rather than to go pitching off some imagined cliff into the folds of a world invisible to others. Even Cicero, never Catullus' biggest fan, expressed concern about the younger poet's state of mind and his disappearance.

Nobody has seen him for what feels like weeks. Passage of time is always amorphous, fluid and immeasurable, in their current life; nothing is fixed enough to be able to pinpoint times and dates. The last anyone saw of him was Ovid, gripping his hand in the forum and trying to lead him home; fingers passing through skin like puffs of air, calling his name to no avail. Barely even a turn of the head in response.

Catullus was fading, too fast even to comprehend. Dante, beside Virgil, sat in guilty silence. But Catullus' illness was no fault of his.

Ovid led the search party back to Catullus' villa, where his heart almost stopped to see his friend lying on the grass, translucent, eyes dim and smile half-cocked as he reached to the sky, tracing invisible constellations. His voice cracked as he begged Catullus to look at him, falling to his knees beside his friend and trying to card shaking fingers through tousled hair; but Catullus had no more substance to him than vapour, and Ovid couldn't get a solid enough grip on any part of him to drag him back into their land of the living.

Lucretius was trembling beside Seneca, eyes wide. Virgil's head was bowed, and Petronius was murmuring quiet words of comfort to him whilst staring at the absent Catullus in thinly-veiled shock. Ovid, distraught, screamed for his friend to come back - tried any number of comments and words designed to shock a response out of him, even whispered tiny, frantic I love yous into his ear; but if he heard, Catullus made no response. Occasionally his mouth opened and closed, like a fish in a bowl, but no sound emerged from his parted lips.

As Ovid watched, he climbed to his feet and waved goodbye to an imaginary acquaintance, with more soundless farewells - and stepped away, so buoyant that his feet seemed barely to touch the ground.  
  


* * *

  
Catullus saw. He saw figures, shaped vaguely like forgotten acquaintances, clustered around where he lay in the corn fields of his father's villa. Words bubbled through his consciousness, distant and faraway, as though spoken from underwater. He reached, occasionally, for them - trying to point them out to his brother, his parents, asking "Who are they? Mother, they sound so familiar... I don't remember. Should I remember?"

_something wrong -_

"Lucius, who is it out there? Do you see?"

_\- is calling, louder and louder -_

"Mother?"

_\- asked the gods for help -_

"Gaius, darling, come in for dinner," his mother replied from the kitchen, where she always oversees the preparation of the family's meals - a precaution for a son as weak and sickly as Gaius has been recently - and he climbed to his feet, waving farewell to the figures (whoever they might be) and doing as she said.

The smell of baking food permeating the air made his stomach rumble as he headed for the kitchen, unaware of what he was leaving behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay With Me by Sam Smith: [x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB-5XG-DbAA) (on YouTube).


	8. nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda.

Atticus returned from the Greeks a short while after.

He had several of them in tow: Epicurus, who seemed pleased not to be immediately 'accosted' by Lucretius (he had been grumbling, in his gruff manner, about the distinct possibility of that occurrence throughout the whole journey back to Rome. Having had more than enough experience of Lucretius' not-so-secret affinity for Epicurus' works, Atticus had laughed and promised to at least try to control his friend); Homer, who had greeted them with a 'χαίρε' and been rewarded with a 'salve!' from all and even one of Vergil's rare, shy smiles; Herodotus and Thucydides, whom Cicero greeted as old friends, and Sappho, who peered curiously between the assembled Romans for her customary (and apparently absent) fan.

She voiced this concern to Atticus, who turned to his friends with raised eyebrows. "That's a point. We are indeed missing a member of our company." He glanced at Ovid, who could in his experience usually be relied upon to know exactly where and what Catullus was getting up to at any one moment in time. "Where's Catullus? Usually he'd be the first to greet us, but we've not seen him once since passing the city gate."

Ovid opened his mouth to answer, but found words lacking. How to explain that none of them had seen him either, not since the incident in the garden of his villa where he had called Ovid by his brother's name and answering the voice, apparently, of his mother before stepping through the door of his house and thence seeming to disappear into thin air. They had searched the whole house, high and low, but found the door of his bedroom locked; Vergil, despite their worry, had stood firm that a locked door demanded privacy, and suggested that they leave him to whatever he was doing and go to see him again in the morning.

That had been a long time ago, by anyone's reckoning, but for Ovid, it had seemed centuries. Millennia, even.

"We've not seen him either," Horace interjected, frowning, and Atticus glanced towards the quarter of the city that housed Catullus' small estate. He turned back to Sappho with a small smile and offered his arm.

"Let me get you all settled in your lodgings, and then we can go and look for him," he told her, trying not to let his worry at the sight of his friends' faces when Catullus' name was mentioned show. "I'm sure he's around somewhere."

As Atticus disappeared with the Greeks all following, Petronius turned to the others, dark brows drawn over his eyes in concern. "Has anyone checked with Clodia? Perhaps she knows where he is."

"He hasn't been to see her in ages," Ovid snapped, worry fanning the flames of the anger that automatically rose in him at the sound of her name in connection to his friend, "and besides, she's never had the time of day for him, now or ever before."

Petronius simply stared at him with raised eyebrows, as did many of the others. None of them had heard an outburst like that since Horace had uttered the word 'fuck' at Seneca, during the Vergil Crisis (as it had become colloquially known among them), and for Ovid, who was usually preternaturally unruffled and flippant, it was particularly surprising.

"We all know you care for the lad, Ovidius," Horace began, his tone soothing, "but Petronius raises a valid point. There's been many a time when Catullus has run to his puella in need, and no matter how little any of us wants to see him engaged in that..." - "Shit show of a relationship," Petronius supplied, deadpan as ever - "It can't do any harm to at least go and see if she's heard anything."

 _He wouldn't be there_ , Ovid wanted to whine; _he wouldn't do that to me. He wouldn't run to her, surely_... Unless he had, as he'd suspected, done something wrong all that time ago and frightened Catullus away. He was refusing to think about the alternative; the idea that he had passed even further than Vergil before Dante's visit, from shade to oblivion, was too painful to think about. He knew, of course, that sticking his head in the sand would not cure Catullus of his condition; but there was no way that people - real people, he meant, people who still had life and breath and power over these things - would ever allow Catullus to reach such a state. Surely. Surely he would never be forgotten; not if Ovid and the rest of them were still here, even the thrice-damned Antony and the rest of those bloody-minded murderers who had ground the empire into the dirt -

The breeze on the forum had picked up, whipping his toga against his bare legs almost painfully, chilling his exposed arms and chest, cheeks stinging in the cold. He'd never felt a chill like it since Tomis; hearing the roar of the wind and feeling the scrape of its bitter teeth over his flesh made his skin crawl, panic rising in his chest. This was a second exile worse than the first; he had survived the Black sea and its freezing, gnawing loneliness only to relive it now, to feel the loss even more keenly as the one who had finally fitted himself into Ovid's empty heart had been promptly torn out of it again.

Catullus had to be found somewhere. Surely.  
  


* * *

  
Vergil noticed it first. The dimming of the sky, the quiet stillness that passed over Rome for a moment as a soft whistling, like the passing of the wind through rustling leaves, filled the air until it was gone. He stared up at the sky with glistening eyes, and saw a crack in the whiteness, a slim black thread of dark that bled over the whole forum. The others were still searching for Catullus all over; Ovid was at the baths, Seneca in the library, and Horace - who could always, or at least more often than any of the rest of them - be trusted to be tactful, was talking to Clodia.

Cicero was with Atticus and the Greeks, leading a search party in another quadrant of the city, and Petronius was in the temple of Jupiter, asking the wise father for guidance. Vergil cast a glance over Rome, at the bustling of pedestrians in the forum around him and wandering up and down the via Sacra, at those leaning out of windows to call to people passing below, at the reliving and rebreathing Rome around him, and wondered.

They regrouped after a long search, Horace supporting a trembling Ovid on one shoulder.

"No luck," Petronius sighed, shaking his head. Cicero nodded. "Nor with us."

Each of them reported that they had neither seen nor heard anything of him, throughout the city; he had disappeared, entirely and completely, as though the gods had simply picked him up and flung him away into oblivion, to live amongst the stars in the black of night.

Vergil, thinking this, looked up at the sky. "It's grown darker," he murmured, "and the wind has picked up." He gestured to Ovid, who was shivering plaintively against Horace's side. "Do you feel the cold?"

"Perhaps things are returning to normal?" Horace offered, glancing around at the sky and holding a hand out as though feeling for rain.

Vergil began to shake his head, but Sappho spoke up, her sweet voice sad and full of tears.

"No," she said quietly, "this is the beginning. First one, and then the rest; first a dimming, then a darkness. The light fades with each of you." She cast her eyes up at the sky, and Homer bowed his head beside her, nodding distressedly.

"We have seen it amongst our own," he commented in his dolorous voice. "We are fewer than you now, thanks to the passing of time in the Before."

"I don't-" Ovid began, but Vergil looked at him with a pained expression and the pieces visibly, horribly, fell into place.

He stumbled backwards, shrugging Horace's comforting arm away - voice rising in a panic, shrieking No and Catullus' name, over and over, shaking his head as tears started to fall, chest constricting and breath coming faster and faster. Petronius immediately caught him by the shoulders, wrapping his strong arms around Ovid's soft chest, holding him still as he howled; Sappho watched, tears lining her own eyelids, until one fell down her cheek to land on the grass where it dangled from the tip of a blade of grass, green as Catullus' eyes.  
  


* * *

  
The empty white sky had shattered like a pane of glass as he stepped through the door to his bedroom. What awaited was not the familiar wooden floorboards and plaster walls, the straw-filled bed with its curtains of mis-stitched stars, but the real thing: sky, black as night, and a million stars, scattered like the freckles over his own pale limbs, and when he opened his mouth, they poured into his lungs until he felt about to burst. Infinity raced through his veins like flame, and he was at last warm, and quiet, and he called his name - the first thing to come to his mind - and the stars answered in a myriad voices, sweet and melancholy as birdsong.

He walked over the endless space, floating in a great all-encompassing nothing of blackness and starlight, listening for the voice of Lucius amongst the chattering stars. They all seemed so far away, reaching as he did for one or the other, trying to draw them down from their high seats. They avoided his questing fingers easily, for his reach was too short; though as he walked, he climbed, coming nearer and nearer until familiar faces came into view, surrounded by light so bright it made his eyes burn. He called his brother's name again and again, still walking, still impossibly climbing, passing childhood friends and playground enemies and sweethearts and old flames until he heard it again - a calling, in the far distance, of 'Gaius! Gaius!' in answer.

His walk sped to a run, and then to a flight; the dark seared his skin as he sped through this night, guided imperceptibly by the sound of his brother's voice. He found him, arms outstretched, beside the setting sun, bright as gold, tears like diamonds in his eyes, still murmuring his name. Gaius stepped into that embrace and became that light, feeling his whole body burn away until all that remained was silver and diamond and the second star to the north, at his brother's right hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! The end. A massive thank you to everyone who has been reading this along with me, and I'm so sorry it took me so long to finish. All credit goes of course to [chelidon](http://chelidon.tumblr.com) for writing this fantastic comic in the first place, and for the headcanon which inspired all of this. A great friend of mine and one of my absolute favourite people, to whom this is dedicated with love and apologies for all of this angst. I don't enjoy torturing you, honestly.

**Author's Note:**

> Rêverie by Claude Debussy: [x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79UfWizjGiQ) (on YouTube).


End file.
